Liaising with the stars

Dutch universities and research institutes such as ASTRON, DIFFER, Nikhef and SRON are involved in large research infrastructures to perform experimental physics research. This inherently includes the construction of various high-tech equipment for CERN, ITER, ESO, ESA, etc., the so-called Big Science organisations, whose research requires large-scale facilities. The various domains of research each have their own approach to working with industry. However, with the size of these facilities increasing over the last decades, the involvement of industry has become indispensable and fundamental, especially in the engineering domain and for the production of parts in large numbers.

This Mikroniek article highlights three projects in the astronomy domain to demonstrate how the collaboration between industry and Big Science can be established: Km3NeT, ProtoDUNE and ETpathfinder. (Image courtesy of KM2Net)